The Nuptial Flight 
the simple naked animal to the odious half- 
animal,” I murmured. ‘You are thinking 
of the first semblance now,” he replied, 
“the semblance dear to the poet, that we 
saw before; let us not confuse it with 
the one we are now considering. These 
thoughts and feelings are petty, if you will, 
and vile; but what is petty and vile is still 
better than that which is not at all. Of 
these thoughts and feelings they avail them- 
selves only to hurt each other, and to persist 
in their present mediocrity; but thus does 
it often happen in Nature. The gifts she 
accords are employed for evil at first, for 
the rendering worse what she had appa- 
rently sought to improve; but from this evil 
a certain good will always result at the end. 
Besides, I am by no means anxious to prove 
that there has been progress, which may be 
a very small thing or a very great thing, 
according to the place whence we regard it. 
It is a vast achievement, the surest ideal 
perhaps, to render the condition of men a 
little less servile, a little less painful; but 
let the mind detach itself for an instant 
from material results, and the difference 
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